by Leah Konen
Bryson cornered me afterward, while she was in the bathroom, asked me what I was doing, shared some choice words about her behavior. It smelled like stale popcorn and chemical fake butter, and there were the sounds of a Pokémon pinball machine drifting in from the corner. And I felt like I had to choose between my best friend and my girlfriend.
The choice was easy.
I didn’t hang out with Bryson much the rest of sophomore year. But eventually, he saw that things weren’t going to change. By junior year, we were all friends again.
He was happy when I broke up with her. Ecstatic. Only three days later, he made me come with him to the basement of this idiot guy who was a year older than us but still hanging around town. I had three beers that night, which was a lot for me. . . .
Sometimes I still think it would have all gone down differently if I hadn’t stayed friends with Bryson.
“Hello,” Ammy says.
I turn to her as we walk. She’s staring at me.
“I asked where you think the ticket machine is.”
“Damn, you really are worried,” I say.
She knits her eyebrows together as we pass a deli that’s closing up early. “Hey, it’s my last chance to get there at a remotely reasonable hour. I don’t want to screw it up.”
“Sorry,” I say, and I feel the ache of guilt again. She wouldn’t be in this situation if not for me. “I think there should be a kiosk, in addition to the guy at the window, but you never know at smaller stations. We have time.”
She nods, and we cut through a parking lot, beeline for the brick building. A bus comes into view. A large one. Ahh, sweet glory.
“I never thought I’d be so happy to see a bus,” Ammy says, walking faster.
“Me either.”
“Time check?”
“Three fifty-three.”
“Perfect. I hate being rushed for stuff like this.”
“Me too.”
There is no kiosk, so we head into the line, which is empty. The ticket seller is standing up, his back to us.
There’s a sign on the window.
“All Evening Buses Canceled Due to Weather.”
And then there’s a grumbling roar of an engine.
“Oh Jesus, no,” I hear behind me.
I turn to see Ammy, breaking into that same desperate, pointless run I had to witness when she chased the train. The bus is well across the parking lot, pulling away. She doesn’t go more than twenty feet before she turns back, an awful, defeated look on her face.
“Tell me that wasn’t our bus,” she says, out of breath.
“It couldn’t be,” I say. I check my phone again, which is about to die. Three fifty-four. There’s no way.
“Excuse me,” I say, knocking on the glass. “Excuse me.” The man in the booth turns to me, taps on the glass right back, pointing to the sign.
Ammy’s breaths quicken behind me. “It’s okay,” I say, turning toward her. “We’ll work this out. Don’t worry.”
I tap on the glass again. The man looks like he’s in his late fifties, slightly rotund, and exhausted. He rolls his eyes and sits down, leans up to the microphone in front of the gap in the window. “Can I help you, sir?”
His name tag says Chet. Of course it says Chet.
“That bus wasn’t the four o’clock bus, was it?”
The man shakes his head, and my heart soars with relief. “That was the three-thirty. It was held up due to the weather.”
I turn to Ammy, give her my best smile. “It wasn’t the four o’clock!”
Her eyes light up, and the thought hits me, strong and impossible to ignore: she’s so beautiful when she’s happy.
“So can we have two tickets for the four, please?”
The man points at the sign again, almost smugly, with a touch of this generation couldn’t survive ten minutes without their precious phones. “Sir, that bus is canceled. All the rest of the buses are canceled for the storm. The snow is supposed to go all night. That’s why the sign’s up.”
It feels like my heart falls from my chest to the bottom of my stomach.
“Is there another bus after that?” I ask.
“Can you read, sir?”
“I’m just asking!” My voice is rising.
He clears his throat, and I swear all the frustration that the guy’s ever felt in his fifty-odd years is written on his face. “I’m going home now, sir.”
I stare at him, watching him pack up, hardly able to believe it.
We’re fucked.
Totally, utterly fucked.
There are no other buses. The train left forever ago. There probably aren’t even cabs on the road, even if we could get a cab in whatever small town we’re currently occupying.
I won’t get to Rina tonight. We’ll miss the reservation. The anniversary. All of it.
I’ll get there tomorrow on a day that means nothing with a sad excuse about getting held up last night, and she’ll probably slam the door in my face.
And Ammy—wherever she’s going, I’ve ruined it now.
Karma. So much for goddamn karma.
I turn around, ready for the fight, the outburst, the anger, all directed at me. Knowing I deserve it.
But she’s laughing.
Keeled over, one hand on her suitcase handle, the other on her stomach.
She’s shaking with laughter. Giddy, uncontrollable laughter.
I look back to the man, and he takes a moment from his hurried packing up to shrug, giving me that look that guys sometimes give each other when a girl does something nutty. I look back to her. “Are you okay?”
She can barely stop laughing enough to nod, but then finally, she speaks. “Yeah,” she says. “I’m okay.”
“But . . . we’re screwed.”
She starts laughing again. “Oh, I know.”
“But—”
She puts a hand on her hip. “Look,” she says, interrupting me. “I’ve run after two modes of transportation now, missing them by only minutes each time.” She holds her hands out. “And it’s still fucking snowing, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to stop. I’m stuck with someone I’ve known all of five minutes in the middle of nowhere. If I can’t laugh about that, Lord help me.”
I let out a deep breath, but her humorous mood doesn’t make me feel all that much better. “I don’t know what to do.”
She crosses her arms in front of her. “I only have ten percent battery left on my phone. You?”
I check mine. “Just one,” I say.
She nods. “I figured. There’s gotta be a diner or coffee shop or something around here, right? Let’s go charge our phones, and make a new plan.”
I shrug. “All right, I guess. But every plan I’ve had today has been an utter Dumpster fire.”
She laughs again. “Well, you’re not going to get rid of me now, so let’s just try to at least make a plan that’s not a Dumpster fire, okay?”
“Okay,” I manage.
“Come on,” she says, and she starts to head out of the parking lot.
She doesn’t know where she’s going. Neither of us do. And my phone is this close to conking out completely.
But at least she’s doing something, I remind myself.
At least it’s not like all the pressure is on me.
It’s almost like we’re on a team now, and she’s going to act as captain for a little bit.
She may have only known me for “all of five minutes,” but she knows enough to know that I need some help.
And I’m thankful for that. I really am.
AMMY
4:02 P.M.
I ONLY GET AS FAR AS THE EDGE OF THE PARKING LOT before it all hits me, before my laughter, my forced attempt at positivity to cheer up Noah, all feels just . . . stupid.
Because I’m going to miss my dad’s wedding.
Well, my dad’s fake wedding. But still.
Even if we could somehow miraculously pull a plan together, there’s just no way I’ll get there in time. Th
ere’s no way.
Noah sidles up to me. “Do you know where you’re going?” he asks.
I shake my head, and so we stand there at the edge of the parking lot while I search for something close by. It doesn’t take long to find the Main Street Café, on—you guessed it—Main Street, the road we walked on much more hopefully only a few minutes ago.
We retrace our steps to the main drag. The streets are empty. People are huddled in their homes in preparation for the storm.
“Is it open, you think?” he asks.
I shrug. “It says that it’s open until nine p.m., but yeah, I don’t really know. It’s worth a shot, though.”
We turn right onto Main Street, passing a closed coffee and sandwich place on the way—which sends me into a mini panic—but I keep walking anyway.
I pick up the pace a little, and just as I do, my foot slides beneath me, slipping on a patch of ice. Before I even realize it, Noah is behind me, catching me, holding me, hands around me like he can protect me from everything.
“Are you okay?” he asks. His voice is deep, coming from behind, close to my ear. “That’s black ice.”
“I’m fine,” I say, feeling that jolt of electricity again, the same one I felt back when he caught me jumping down from the train. I take a deep breath, pulling myself together. Willing my voice not to betray me.
“Uh, I think it’s up there,” I say. There’s a blue awning over an older storefront with antiqued yellow siding. There’s no “Open” sign on the door, but I’m hoping that’s just a fluke.
My heartbeats have calmed a bit by the time we get in front of the door, and I pull on it quickly, feeling instant joy as it opens, as I hear the ding of a bell.
It’s dim inside, which doesn’t give me too much hope, and it’s empty. Shit.
“Excuse me,” I call into what looks like an abyss. “Are you open?”
There’s nothing—not a sound, not a movement. I look back to Noah, and I know the fear on my face has to be showing now.
And then I wonder, for a second, what it would be like to have his arms around me again.
But that’s when I hear a clash of pans, and a waitress whooshes through the double doors to the kitchen. She cocks her hip to the side. “Two?” she says.
I nod, relieved that they’re open. Relieved that my stupid thoughts about Noah were interrupted. “Please.”
She sighs, walking around the counter and grabbing two menus that look like they could use a good cleaning. She’s young, probably only a few years older than us, with red hair, freckled skin, and a scowl that looks like it’s been permanently etched into her face. She tosses the menus down on the table and doesn’t say anything else.
I take a seat and Noah follows. Immediately, he crouches down, looking under the table.
He pops up. “Well, good news is, there are plugs down here.”
“Thank the Lord,” I say, fishing my phone and charger out of my bag and tossing them to him. I nod at the flowers, tucked into the top of his backpack, wet and wilted and totally destroyed. “I think you’re going to have to get a new bunch of flowers,” I say.
“You think?” he says bitterly. And then: “Sorry. I’m just stressed out.”
“I know,” I say. “Me too.”
Noah ducks back under the table to plug our phones in. When he comes up, he ventures a small smile. “Props on finding the diner,” he says. “I think I was ready to lie down in that parking lot and let the snow cover me up.”
I laugh. “Someone had to pull it together. And you’d been doing it for me all day.”
I cringe internally as I remember the way I yelled at him before, and I’m thankful that the bus debacle sent me into laughter instead. It gives me a tiny hope that I can escape my fate—that I won’t turn into my mom after all.
The waitress comes back over, and the glint of her sparkly blue eye shadow catches in the lamplight from overhead. “You guys want coffees?” she asks, holding two chipped white cups and a steaming carafe.
“How’d you guess?” I ask.
She doesn’t smile or laugh, just sets the mugs down—not very gently—pours the coffee, and nods to a container of creamers and sugars on the table. “I’ll be back with real milk,” she says. “Do you know what you want?” She doesn’t bother with a pen or paper.
We exchange a glance, and Noah’s eyes survey the menu, because she definitely doesn’t look like the type you’d ask to “just give us five more minutes, please.” After a quick look, he orders a double cheeseburger, and I get a double, too—because at this point, why not?
As she walks away, he grins. “A double,” he says as he pours not one but four sugars into his cup. “Nice.”
I add a little creamer to mine and narrow my eyes. “Are you trying to call me fat or something? You don’t have to be six feet tall and a dude to order a double, you know.”
He laughs for a second, but then sees that I’m at least somewhat serious. Any high school guy worth his salt should know that you don’t joke about a girl’s weight. You just don’t. “Oh, God, no. I mean, you look great. Obviously. . . . Sorry,” he says. “It was a dumb thing to say.”
But I barely hear his sorry, because all I can focus on is that lovely little obviously thrown in after he said I look great. I feel my face start to go hot, and I practically dive into my coffee.
He sips on his, too. And then we both look up at the same time, catching each other’s eyes. I’m positive my face is red.
And it’s so strange, because we are strangers, and we both have very different reasons for being here, and I meant it when I said that romance was off-limits, and he’s taken, anyway, with his soon-to-be-former ex. . . .
But still, if I didn’t know better, it would feel almost like a . . .
Well.
Like a date.
I’ve never been on a real date before.
He’s still looking at me, and I stare down at my hands, at my chipped nail polish that I was going to fix before the wedding, back when I thought I’d be in Hudson with plenty of time to spare.
I look back up, and thankfully—disappointingly?—he’s no longer looking at me. Instead, he’s flipping through a tiny machine on the table.
“Is that a jukebox?” I ask.
He looks at me, smirks. “You’ve never seen a mini diner jukebox before?”
I shake my head.
He goes back to flipping, but I don’t take my eyes off of him. I don’t know why I’m suddenly feeling . . . different.
It’s something about the restaurant, the way the booth seats are so close together, the yellow paint on the walls and the kitschy signs about how “Children Left Unattended Will Be Towed Away at Owner’s Expense” that makes it feel quaint, homey—intimate.
Or maybe it’s from before, from the way he looked at me when I started laughing. With relief. Appreciation. We’d known each other for such a short time, and already it was like we could communicate without words.
Stop it, Ammy, I think. Stop it.
I remind myself that all guys are off-limits, that he is especially off-limits because he’s hung up on another girl, but then he does something stupid—he settles on “Suspicious Minds.”
My heart stops for just the tiniest of seconds.
Because if this really were a date, I’d be swooning.
“You like Elvis?” I ask.
He shrugs. “My mom was always playing his stuff when I was little.”
“This is my favorite song,” I say.
“Really?”
I nod.
“Like your favorite favorite song? Of all the songs in the world?”
“His voice is so . . . I don’t know, oaky.”
“Oaky?” he laughs. “That’s what my parents are always saying about wine.”
I feel myself start to blush and bite my lip. “Do you know what I mean, though? Like, so rich. Warm, I guess.” I feel stupid, suddenly. Ridiculous.
But it’s okay because that’s when the waitress br
ings two very quickly cooked burgers, and the spotlight is off of me for a moment, as Elvis sings the last verse.
She sets them down a little roughly and plops a bottle of Heinz in the middle. “Need anything else?”
I shake my head. My burger may look lackluster, but I would expect nothing more from a place like this.
She walks away, and I lean in a little toward Noah.
“Do you think there’s another bus or train?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “There’s definitely no other bus line that goes to Hudson. And the closest train stop is like twenty miles away. Remember, we didn’t get off at a real stop.”
“I know,” I say.
“And even if we could get to that stop, I wouldn’t count on it running in this weather.”
I drum my fingers on the counter, wondering what on earth we’re supposed to do. Minutes ago, I was worried about not making it to my dad’s wedding in time. But now?
I’m worried about everything. I can’t ask Kat for a ride when the wedding is in less than two hours. I can’t call my mom and give her the pleasure of knowing that my whole plan has failed—as far as she knows, I’m already at my dad’s. I can’t ask my dad to abandon Sophie at the Italian restaurant altar or whatever to come out and save us. We’re stuck.
I look over to the waitress, who’s wiping down the counters with a dirty-looking rag. “Is there a cab company around here?” I ask. I know it would be, like, super-duper expensive, but at this point, I’m desperate. I have a credit card with a five-hundred-dollar limit, so that’s something, at least.
She laughs. Not a good sign.
Noah and I exchange a glance.
She raises her eyebrows. “It’s not really a cab kind of place.”
“Thanks anyway,” I say weakly, and then I turn back to Noah. “What are we going to do?”
He shoves his burger in his mouth, buying himself time to answer.
I do the same. It didn’t look that appetizing a second ago, but it tastes good, really good. Especially after being in the cold.
Burgers and coffee, I think. Burgers and coffee between strangers. Well, former strangers.